Dilma’s government is sinking into a major political crisis, because she betrayed the promises she made to the population during her campaign. Denounces for corruption reach the PT, Lula and the current government as much as PSDB, PMDB, PP, etc. The President of the Camera, Eduardo Cunha –who should be in prison and with his mandate annulled, already- accelerates the process of impeachment.
By Ze Maria Almeida. Published in Folha de São Paulo, April 8th, 2016.
Vice-President Michel Temer, who can be part of the Lava Jato investigation in the Supreme [Federal Court], and PMDB, who has several politicians members currently under investigation for corruption, are as responsible as PT for the attacks taken ahead by this government to the workers’ rights.
PSDB members, on their side, pose as defenders of morals and good traditions, when we all know about the corruption cases during FHC [Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil before Lula’s first turn], about the scandal of snacks in São Paulo, and the denounces on Aécio Neves.
Neither PT, nor PSDB or PMDB are worried about the problems that torment the life of the people: unemployment, inflation, cut of rights, health system, education, transport and housing chaos, and violence against black, poor people.
The PT rules for the banks, contractors and multinationals, same as PSDB. Both battle to drive the country today, but they are together making the workers scarify in order to respond to the big companies’ interests.
We should not defend either one o them. We need to take them all out, and call for general elections now! We should change them all. We need a general strike to end dismissals, the cut of social rights, the tax adjustment, and to put corrupts and corruptors in prison, expropriating their goods.
We are not facing a coup threat to our country, as PT brags. The working class and poor population in this country want Dilma out, an ASAP, as they chose her and they were betrayed by her. The rejection to the alternative Michel Temer represents is completely fair, but we cannot defend for Dilma to stay because of that. We need to take them all out. This is why impeachment is not a solution: it would only change Dilma for Temer, six for half a dozen.
It makes no sense to criticize the government’s adjustment, and defend, at the same time, for Dilma to stay, appealing to the defense of democracy, as PSOL and MTST [No-Roof Workers’ Movement] leaderships are doing.
Right now, democracy is under attack by the PT government, by implementing the Anti-terrorism Act, for example. The adjustment is the face of this government. To defend its continuation is to be accomplice of what the government is doing to the workers. It is necessary to break with the pro-government forces, and come to the struggle against PT and PSDB.
The changes this country needs will not come through our participation in events organized by PSDB, the FIESP [São Paulo Industries’ Federation], or by Globo Net [press], to take Dilma out only to put Temer or support Aécio in her place. Neither will it come from demonstrations to defend Dilma to stay. None of them represent us.
Workers need to take the head of the struggle to take them all out of the power: Dima, Temer, Cunha, Renan Calheiros, Aécio and this entire National Congress. We have to demand general elections now, with new rules: no private funding for campaigns, equal television time for all the parties, revocability of mandates, politicians’ salaries equal to a professor or an industrial workers.
It is necessary to say this country will only change for real under a workers’ government. The true change will not come from elections. Workers need to struggle for a government of their own, a socialist government, without bosses and corrupts, based on popular councils, supported on the struggles of the working class and the poor people to change the country.
José Maria de Almeida, 58, Metal worker, National President of PSTU – Workers’ Socialist Party-Unified. He was candidate to Presidency of the Republic in 2014.
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Translation: Sofía Ballack.
